AllFreeNovel
Share Us
The first was that he didn’t seem to work a normal job. He kept no regular hours and seemed to have no determinable schedule. When he left his house, it was nearly always in the company of one or more of the men she’d encountered that first night. More often than not it would be the pair she thought were brothers. Myles, the shy young man that had destroyed her flowers, and Dylan, the irritating one with a bad attitude that made her teeth clench every time she saw his cruel, arrogant expression.
Her second observation was that he was unusually secretive about his activities. All the men were preoccupied with looking over their shoulders, taking furtive glances around them whenever they were outside. Despite that, Myles had a habit of speaking too often and too loudly that had gotten him chastised many times by the others, with Dylan going so far as to slap him in the back of the head to silence him while muttering savagely under his breath. So far, little of Myles’s ramblings had been particularly useful, but she had heard bits and pieces of conversations about a job they were working on.
“What do you think he’s doing over there?” Eloise asked, unceremoniously dropping the question on her favorite remaining neighbors, Jackson and David, one Saturday several weeks after Ethan moved in. She was standing at their living room window, a cup of tea in her hands as she stared intently at her own house across the street.
“What?” They both looked at her blankly and she gestured with her cup to the house across the street. Not her house. The one beside it. The one where Ethan lived. He needed to trim his grass and his flowers were wilting in the late spring sun.
Neglectful, as she’d suspected he would be. She sniffed, trying to summon the proper amount of disdain, as her neighbors blinked at her slowly.
“Ethan?” David asked, his tone bewildered.
They continued to stare at her without making a sound when she nodded a confirmation and huffed a little in embarrassment. “He doesn’t seem to have a job. I just wonder if maybe he’s dealing drugs or something. He has to pay for that car somehow.”
“In this neighborhood?” Jackson seemed to come back to himself, the shock of her question wearing off enough for him to ask his own with a shake of his head. He was leaning on the arm of their sofa, a dark blue button-down shirt with a chaotic pattern of hot pink flamingos opened to mid chest and a long-stemmed wine glass cradled between graceful fingers. “I doubt it.”
Jackson was in his early fifties, blunt and colorful in a way that she normally appreciated, but she scowled at that, tipping her head to take in his patient smile and his husband’s reproving look.
“Okay, but you’ve seen the way he goes in and out of there. He’s obviously up to something.” She looked meaningfully at David, hoping for support and, ideally, confirmation that she wasn’t the only one who couldn’t seem to keep her eyes off the house. Surely, it was suspicion that drove her, more than her own desire to watch the way Ethan’s body moved as he crossed the lawn from front door to car and back again. It’s not like she was looking for reasons to dislike him.
David, in his late thirties, was younger, quieter, and more introspective than his husband. He was stricter about rules and order—even at home his shirts were always ironed and his slacks crisp and perfectly tailored—but he was too polite to echo Jackson’s doubts directly. Even if he disagreed with her, he was far less likely to be so open about it.
“This is a pretty safe area,” he hedged gently.
“But it’s possible,” She tried not to wince at the stubbornness of her own voice. “We don’t know anything about him really, so we don’t know what he might be up to over there.”
David clucked his tongue at her and the two men shared a meaningful glance, but his hand on her arm was gentle. “He’s been nice to everyone since he moved in. That bit with your yard was unfortunate but he replaced what was damaged, right?”
She shrugged but she couldn’t deny it. She’d planted her new hydrangea lovingly in the place of the old and it was thriving.
“It’s not like you have to date him,” Jackson began with a shrug, “but?—”
“Date him?” Her heart seemed to slow down and restart all at once with a painful thump. “Who said anything about dating him?”
David lifted an eyebrow at the unusual forcefulness of her tone. “I think Jackson’s just trying to say that you don’t have to like this guy or spend time with him if he makes you uncomfortable, but maybe you should give him a chance. You’ve always been a little quick to assume the worst until you’re proven wrong, but I’ve never seen you this determined to jump to the worst possible conclusions about someone before.”
“You weren’t all that fond of us, either, if I recall correctly,” Jackson said without taking his eyes off his wine glass. At least he had the decency not to look directly at her when he made a valid point she couldn’t dispute. Her immediate love of the house and neighborhood hadn’t transferred over to the neighbors. It had taken her a little while to warm up to them. It had taken her a little while to warm up her friends at work, too. Maybe, just maybe, she was being a little too hard on Ethan, as well.
She took another sip of her tea without commenting on their observations because she couldn’t bring herself to deny those, either. “So, you think I’m overreacting?” She squinted at his house, the car was parked in the driveway, but the motorcycle was gone. He wasn’t home and she was tempted to go over and peek through his windows.
Jackson shook his head and David gave her a patient smile before answering. “I know you don’t really care for the man and he does keep odd hours but it’s not unusual to work from home these days. Don’t you think that makes more sense than having an actual drug dealer living in the house next door to you?”
It was a reasonable explanation for Ethan’s behavior, and it was obvious they thought she was paranoid. Maybe she was but, too hard on him or not, there was something about Ethan that made her uneasy. It went deeper than her normal reluctance to get to know new people or her mother’s meddling insistence that men were nothing but trouble.
She was still stewing on it when she got home from work the next evening. She’d had Ethan on her mind all day and her eyes went automatically to his house when she pulled onto their street, noting with a frown that his bike was back in the driveway. He wasn’t outside, but he was almost definitely home.
Not that she cared, she assured herself. She was only checking to see where he was so she could make sure to stay out of his way. He was keeping his distance, and she would keep hers. She would stop trying to catch a glimpse of him and his activities out of her windows—probably—because Jackson and David were likely right about her being paranoid, but she didn’t have to be any more involved with him than necessary.
Eloise froze, key still in the front door lock, when a small blur darted her way from the shadows. Her heart was pounding before she recognized it for what it was and she laughed weakly as a wrinkly brown and white puppy jumped against her thighs. She knelt and ran a hand over the dog’s back, noting that it was apparently clean, healthy, and well fed. Someone’s escaped pet then, poor thing. It leaned into her hand, and she rubbed a silky ear between her fingers. She had always wanted a dog growing up, but her mother had never allowed her to have pets.
“Where’d you come from, sweetie?” she asked, cooing to the pup as it snorted and licked at her fingers. “You shouldn’t be outside alone.”
“Hey!”
She looked up and rolled her eyes as Ethan bounded up the front porch steps. She was not in the mood to deal with him. “Yes?”
“That’s my dog,” he said, waving a hand at the animal, who wagged an unrepentant tail at him and made no move to return to its owner as it sat for Eloise’s attentive stroking.
“Is it? Then you should keep him inside unless he’s on a leash.”
